Editor’s Picks

  • The Mountain Gives Birth to a Mouse

    The Mountain Gives Birth to a Mouse

    A report commissioned by Vanderbilt and Washington University acknowledges serious problems in the humanities but offers little meaningful reform.

    In August 2025, Daniel Diermeier, Chancellor of Vanderbilt University, and Andrew D. Martin, Chancellor of Washington University, commissioned philosopher Paul Boghossian to assemble a committee of scholars to write a…

  • What Does ‘Civilization’ Mean?

    What Does ‘Civilization’ Mean?

    The word is hard to define, but too important to abandon.

    In 1975, I had an ear finely tuned for evidence of “ethnocentrism,” the readiness to judge matters by the standards of one’s own culture.  I had just finished my undergraduate…

  • Where Art Thou ‘Queer Desire’?

    Where Art Thou ‘Queer Desire’?

    Columbia prof deducts points for missing LGBTQ themes in Shakespeare.

    The best paper I ever wrote at Columbia University was a final paper arguing that Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was a proto-transgender text. At least, that was my English professor’s opinion.…

  • The Satanic Temple Is Creating a ‘Collegiate Affiliation Program’

    The Satanic Temple Is Creating a ‘Collegiate Affiliation Program’

    The group behind After School Satan Clubs seems to have its sights set on higher education.

    In March, a Colorado school district granted a religious accommodation to a student affiliated with The Satanic Temple (TST). The dispute, TST reports, centered on a digital hall-pass system called…

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